Season 4, Episode 13 - Point of No Return

The story of D-Squad comes to a not-terribly rousing ending with Point of No Return, a decidedly kid-friendly story arc. In this episode, the team finds themselves aboard a Republic cruiser, fully expecting to get home safely. Things are, though, not exactly what they seem. Which surprises exactly no one.

There's some standard and perfectly acceptable action to be found here, a few "last minute saves" and quite a big (very fancy) explosion. Certainly, being The Clone Wars, you never feel as if the entire cast of characters will not be killed - in fact, you can almost bet that someone will go. So it's hard to uniformly dismiss the episode as unwatchable or bad. It's simply much ado about very little. None of our main characters are at risk, R2-D2's near death isn't fooling anyone, and in the end, we learn what it means to be a soldier. Or something along those lines.

My main complaint about the D-Squad storyline is that, even as it gives us a few great moments of R2-D2 heroism, the rest of team feels extremely young-skewing and not terribly funny. Gascon, especially, seems immune to useful information - such as when he insists the empty ship is nothing to worry about. His silliness just never convinced me or made me feel invested.

Rating (out of five): **